And NOW, by polite request:

[vorlon13]

welcome

[rskovride]

Hi, welcome.

[brewer]

Welcome Woof!

Where have your travels taken you?

[Crossless2.0]

Welcome newbie!

Go slay some rabid arguments across the board to gain xp and level up!

And when you're ready, get into one with the forums hardest boss, Little Rik; none is able to defeat him thus far.

Vanessa, I wouldn't take this bait unless you really have a thing about playing chess with pigeons.

Welcome!

[Seraphina]

Hi and welcome!

-Teresa

[vulcanlogician]

Welcome. Glad to have you here.

[Whateverist]

Hello everyone!

By polite request, I've come to introduce myself as a newbie. Quite frankly, I don't even know if I am a newbie as I can't seem to find my previous account for this board, but perhaps I am merely mistaken as it has been a while since I have experienced this site.

I am a life-long, non-religious atheist from Portland, Oregon USA with a habit of traveling the world and living a rather unconventional and unapologetically  rather happy life of my own design and creation. I am a friendly and reasonably sociable introvert (often mistaken for an extrovert) with many interests and hobbies, but I imagine many would find me boring or annoying while some would find me interesting and enjoyable and that is the acceptable nature of the human reality of personal preferences and differences in personality and lifestyle.

I look forward to the discussions here and to getting to know the minds of many of you.


*I hope my avatar will suffice to satisfy your curiosity as I don't see how to post a photo other than from the web.

Now that is what I call an intro: informative, interesting and with a picture no less.  Welcome.  Portland seems to be a hot bed of atheist action, leastwise we have at least three others in the area that I know of.  

I'm in Berkeley, California and atheists may be well be in the majority here.  From a quick search it looks as though 34.5% here are religious, while 38.6 are across the bay in San Francisco and the state as whole is just slightly under 50% religious.  There are quite a few of us at AF.org in California too, though more are in the southern end of the state.

If you'd like to post pictures flickr will store a terabyte of info for free.  

Hope you like it here.  Have fun.

[VanessaUSA]

Thank you all very much for the nice welcome. As for slaying any dragonish posters or otherwise passing out beatings, even to chess-playing pigeons and the like, I assure you that it is usually done without any particular intent to slay, brutalize, offend, or insult anyone really. I simply say what I think and what seems to fit. By the same token, I don't usually take things personally unless there is very clear reason to do so. The good thing about such places as this is that many of us are so used to disagreeing, debating, and arguing as a foundation of our lives, that most here, thankfully, I assume, are not so likely to take things so personally. Meh, perhaps I err in that assumption. Time will tell.

[VanessaUSA]

Welcome newbie!

Go slay some rabid arguments across the board to gain xp and level up!

What is xp? What si the deal with level up? I also noticed today that we apparently have reputation report cards, much like in school. Not sure how any of that works, but at least I haven't been given 50 demerits and sent to bed without desert....or fed to the lions....yet.

---

Welcome Woof!

Where have your travels taken you?

Close to 30 countries; most of Europe, SE Asia, as well as Canada, USA, and Mexico. I have lived in a handful or two and visited or frequented many. I have never been to Africa, the subcontinent, the Middle East, Central or South America, or the Pacific Islands.